by Damon Galgut
‘No, it was in the quarry. That’s what I heard.’
‘It wasn’t in the quarry.’
‘A goat? Why would he –’
‘It wasn’t a goat.’
‘What was it?’
‘Whatever it was.’
‘Ja, whatever.’
33
Everybody in the court stood up and was moving around and everybody was speaking at once. Out of the bedlam a policeman emerged and went up to the prisoners. He was a policeman that none of them had seen before, a nameless person, arbitrary. He gestured to them to follow. Then he turned his back.
As Small walked out of the box Valentine bent and took from the inside of his sock the sharpened sliver of metal that had once been a spoon. It had been filed against the wall until its point was fine. Since the time that he had left the cell that morning it had rested flatly against the surface of his skin until it was as warm as his body and now he pushed it with surprising ease into the blue back of the policeman and the blue changed colour in an instant.
The policeman fell. Or he didn’t fall but went down on his knees. He was trying to reach round behind him. To pull it out. Valentine went past him quickly and past his brother Small too. Through the opened door of the vestry. There were shirts and jackets hanging on a rack and a basket of little oddments and a safe set into the wall. A large single window looking out on a garden and he ran very hard at the glass. It gave way like water and he fell through its surface and was lying on leaves, amongst rock. All this seemed to happen without sound.
Valentine got up. There was soil and blood on his hands and glass lying everywhere like frost. He was dimly aware of a periphery of faces turned heavily towards him like sunflowers. He ran at the faces. They parted in front of him and drew back and he was at the head of a street that stretched away in diminishing perspective towards an invisible point. He ran towards the point. Houses went past on either side and gardens and kerbstones like loaves of white bread. Then there were no more houses but grass and stones on each side and he continued to run at the point that receded and the township rose in silence in front of him. He ran at the point and the point was the plaza and then the point was the church. The doors were open under the lopsided cross and there was no sound except the sound that he made and the point was inside the church. And he ran towards the vanishing point.
34
The church emptied quickly. Only he was left. He sat for a long time in the witness box. Then he got up and walked down through the nave of the church to the doors. Nobody arrested him, he was detained by nobody.
He walked down the street. In the houses with their naked brick faces the lights were going on like stars and from the gardens that he passed small plaster gnomes watched him, their colours pale from the sun and time, and he knew he was not part of any of this, it not part of him either.
He came to the edge of town. The last house, the last fence, and what unrolled away beyond that was what had always been here. The earth was hard and brown. Across it the road ran level as a plank. He took off the burned black robe and shed it there on the verge like a skin which no longer fit him. He walked.
He spent the night at the quarry. There was a rock overhanging the edge and he curled up and slept on this like an innocent, a figure in a story not his. In the morning when he woke it was already full light. A procession was passing in the road. He walked a little way and watched. The wagons rode in file, tardy and tremendous, their wheels cutting tracks in the dirt. There were caravans and horses and midgets and girls and the cavalcade passed with tumultuous slowness. Some of them called to him but he didn’t call back. He stood and watched them come over the ridge.
Then from the wagons he saw the rider appear on the machine, moving very fast. He was going back and forth between the vehicles. The man watched him with curiosity at first. The sound of the engine was tiny and metallic, the noise of a bee in a room. It was hard to see clearly in the glare and dust and only when he came closer could the man see what he was wearing.
Then he headed out along the edge of the quarry, leaving the road behind. He was running. The rider was perhaps five hundred metres distant and this was all that was between them as he resumed his journey on a morning still cold, still pale with a pure early light.
35
It ran as far as the wharf and when it came to the edge with the sea heaving darkly below it turned and tried to get past him but he was close behind it with his gun already drawn and he dropped to one knee and fired and missed and fired again and this time hit it in the side or the neck and it fell backwards kicking and into the sea and he ran to the edge and stood braced on the planks wet with weed and spray and it was rolling in the water below and he fired twice more for the crazed joy of it, the water upleaping to the kiss of the bullets and the sad carcass sinking from sight. He watched till it had vanished. He pushed the revolver back into its holster. It was hot like a hand on his hip. He walked slowly back down the wharf between the bollards and coils of rope to where a crowd had gathered near the road.
‘Did you get it?’
‘Ja. It’s gone.’
‘Captain Mong?’
‘Ja?’
‘One of the prisoners escaped. The other one tried too but he –’
He ran all the way back to the white church. Empty and desolate, its doors thrown open on darkness. He went in. The pews stood skewly and bibles and hymnbooks were scattered on the ground as if the place had been sacked. He came back out again running and only when he was halfway between the town and the township did he slow again to a walk. He was limping slightly and gasping. He sounded like an angry child crying. By this time it was night.
Before he reached the plaza he could see it. The glow was still soft and secretive but the smell was unmistakable. He knew. He swore in a quiet voice and started running again. He ran into the plaza. All around like dumbfounded junkies stood watchers with mouths hanging open.
He told them to form lines. They obeyed him. Buckets were passed hand to hand and when they reached the end of the line were emptied and sent back again. Then the fire-engine came. It was the only one in the town and it had last been used three years before. It drove into the plaza, bell dinning, one front tyre flat and all its hubcaps missing and a bird’s nest built on its bumper. The driver was the only fireman. He jumped down, muttering and wall-eyed, frenetic. There was a ragged hose on the back. There was nothing to fix the hose to. The fireman stood cursing with the useless black hose and the lines of people who were passing the buckets stopped what they were doing and the buckets were put down on the concrete. Someone climbed up on the engine, the better to watch the conflagration. Others followed. In the end even the fireman sat up in his cab, eating a sandwich and watching.
How the little church burned. The bricks built up to astonishing heat and shattered in sudden explosions and the rafters groaned and shifted like bones and tiles slid and broke on the ground. The fire was like an envelope with a picture sealed inside it. Pigeons flew blinded by smoke and night and their shadows were punched out on the clouds overhead like ancient more terrible birds and one of them caught alight and flew burning in a long trajectory and fell. The glare was like noon. The plaza reflected it and people congregated along the edges were talking and shouting but no human voice could be heard only the voice of the fire. Smoke rose in long supple lines.
There was one man apart from the rest and that was the Captain. His face had been blackened by ash and his uniform was rumpled and dirty. Even his buttons were dulled. He moved up and down along the edge of the fire and he picked things up sometimes and then put them down again. A bucket. A stone. A shoe that somebody had discarded. He was saying words to himself. He turned at one point and she was standing there, the woman. They looked at each other without speaking and he knew that he wouldn’t ever touch her again though he didn’t understand why. He turned away from her. The fire was twinned and reflected in his eyes like some other fire burning in his brain.
He walked across the plaza.
On the wall of sandbags outside the police-station three policemen were sitting and watching. When they saw him coming they stopped talking and when they saw his face they got to their feet uneasily and looked around.
‘I want you to find him,’ he said.
‘Captain?’
‘Find him and bring him to me.’
They went away.
In an hour they came back again. The fire had passed its height and the flames were subsiding in the ruins. But the pop and hiss of wood were audible behind him. He sat crouched down on his heels. He didn’t stand up.
‘He’s not in town, Captain.’
‘Someone saw him going south.’
‘North.’
‘South.’
‘We can get dogs in the morning.’
‘Dogs?’ He blinked up at them, weary, confused. He looked old.
‘To follow him, Captain. If we can give them a scent, from the blanket in the cell, maybe –’
Now he did stand. His face had cleared again. ‘Who?’ he said. His voice sounding quiet and thin.
They looked at him. ‘The prisoner, Captain.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not the prisoner.’
‘Not the prisoner?’
He gestured behind him.
‘Did the prisoner do this?’
They looked at the fire. They looked back at him. One of them looked down at the ground.
‘I don’t know, Captain.’
‘Bring me the minister,’ he said. ‘It’s the minister I want.’
When they came back again it was past midnight and the fire had burned down low. The watchers had mostly dispersed except for two or three at the far end of the plaza. Captain Mong was sitting on the wall of sandbags, staring in front of him.
‘We can’t find him, Captain. He’s nowhere.’
‘Look again,’ he said. ‘He’s somewhere.’
‘Captain, we’ve been all over the –’
‘Look again,’ he said.
This time they were gone for three or four hours. He didn’t move from where he sat. It was dawn when they came back for the last time, their faces pinched and drawn with fatigue. They were carrying the cassock. He took it and held it up and shook it and asked them where they had found it. They told him and he nodded and thanked them and then he drew it over his head. They looked at him, astonished. He walked past them without looking at them.
In the fire-engine parked at the edge of the square the fireman was uncomfortably sleeping. He woke to an unfamiliar guttural sound and sat up in the cab. He saw the dark foundations of what had been a church with part of one wall somehow standing and through the fibrillations of heat still arising from it he saw a motorbike moving away.
‘Now it’s morning again,’ he said.
As he went down the road out of the township the Captain saw that the circus had gone. There was a bald place on the ground where the tent had been standing but no other remnant or sign. He rode slowly at first. Only when he had passed through the town and was on the road going out did he open up the throttle. The day was still and clear with a thin fur of dew on the grass. There were birds flying in cryptic formations overhead and once he saw a creature at the side of the road sitting vertically upright in surprise and then bolting away but he was otherwise the only living thing abroad. An emissary bearing bad tidings.
The road travelled straight into the sun and then swung and went up a ridge. The circus was here. The trucks and wagons were strung out in a line on the road. He didn’t slow down as he got to them though he was going fast by now. The cage at the very back of the line was empty. He swung wide of it and around the front and wove his way between the vehicles like this all the way up the ridge. He came to the top. The road dropped away below with the line of wagons and cars continuing on it and the quarry was on the left. The bike lifted from the ground and hung and came down and he was moving between the radiators and the astonished faces and animals shying away behind bars. When the slope evened out he had almost drawn level with the quarry. He knew already what it was that he would see: the man the hole the man running
He went past the quarry and turned. The man was heading east, already some distance away. The policeman drove across the gravel with stones spraying out behind him and when he came to where the grass started he went on. He didn’t know what he expected. That he would continue to ride where no road was. That nothing material could stop him. The bike went a short way and then it hit something and stopped. It bucked and keeled over and he went over the handlebars, performing an elaborate gymnastic in the air before he also hit the ground. He landed on his side with one arm extended and a large pain passed brightly across him.
When he sat up the world was moving like water and he could hear laughter from a distance. His bike lay nearby with oil dribbling out of it and its front wheel spinning around. He turned and looked back and along the road all the wagons had stopped and the people were laughing at him. Parked in a long line in the sun, gesticulating and jeering. He turned and looked the other way for the man but he wasn’t where he had been. He was remote and diminished by distance. A tiny figure, going from him.
He stood up. His thigh felt stiff when it moved. There was a deep graze on his hand. He took the gun out of its holster. The laughter got louder and more raucous and someone shouted something at him. He turned and fired at them. Now there was one bullet left. The laughter stopped immediately and all along the wagons the watching figures dropped out of sight.
He yelled wordlessly back at them as he pushed the revolver back into its holster. He picked up a stone and threw it and it fell in an arc into the quarry. He heard it strike. He turned again and went after the man. He was hobbling and lurching. When he had gone a little way the people emerged from their wagons again to watch him. Somebody made a joke and a few of them laughed loudly and then the circus went on travelling down the road.
36
The man heard the shot behind him. It was distant and tiny, a door slamming far away somewhere. He was running already but he ran faster now though he didn’t have the strength to sustain it. When he had gone a little way he stopped and looked back behind him. There was a commotion of some sort at the quarry. He could see the wagons strung out along the road, though they seemed to be stationary now, and a little centre of movement out in the veld from which a fine haze of dust was arising. He turned and ran on.
The distance between him and the quarry became quickly greater and greater. He ran out through the wasteland of grass as if he was being pursued. The sun was climbing now and the dew had dried from the grass and the air was stiffening with heat. He ran. He tripped in a hole once and fell but he got up without pausing and ran on. When he couldn’t run any further he stopped and looked behind him again but he couldn’t see anything except grass.
He went on, walking now. His body felt lessened, as if something had ebbed out of it. He had pains in his side and head. He breathed shallowly and fast and he found it hard to keep upright. The sun was hot. There were no clouds. At noon there was no shade anywhere. He stopped and stared around him and the landscape continued in a dry yellow sameness of grass. He walked towards what he thought was east but there was nothing to mark out any direction. Heat shimmered around him and the grass hissed softly. He imagined water and he thought about its clearness and he thought about the sounds water made.
He came to a large rock bulging out of the ground. He climbed up on to it to see. The rock was very hot and he couldn’t touch it with his hands. He walked on it. He clambered up to the highest point and stood there, looking around. The earth seemed uniform and flat. He looked for the road but he didn’t know in what direction it was. He turned a full circle, looking every way, before he stopped rigid and stared.
It was a long time before he was sure. In the desolation it might have been a termite hill, a branch. But it was a human figure moving slowly. He stood quite still, looking back, and then he sat down on the rock.
He breathed out. He stood up on the rock
again and brought his hands up to his face. A big man, very tall. He went down the side of the rock that was farthest away from the policeman and started to run on through the grass. In a short time he slowed to a walk. He gasped for breath and kept looking behind him and his shoulders were trembling again. When he looked behind him now he saw the other man clearly, both of them bisected by the line of the grass, their halved bodies floating and bobbing.
The sun went down in a sewage of colour and the landscape looked violent and strange. At first the darkness was complete. The only light came from the stars. He thought he could change course in the night but the sky to his left grew paler and he could see the horizon and then the moon came up. It was full and round with a blue barren face and it cast its radiance down. The grass was like metal in the thin blue light and everything could be seen.
The heat of the day disappeared quickly. He could feel dew prickling on him. Then the moon set and then it was dark. He was very tired by now and his mind had no edges and twice he fell asleep on his feet. He staggered and caught himself and the third time he did fall, sprawling on his face on the ground. He fell asleep immediately and he didn’t care what might happen to him.
He woke abruptly and tried to get up. He couldn’t. He fell and clambered and fell over again. A baby. A drunk. He lay there and suddenly he laughed. The sound was harsh and not quite human to his ear, as if it came from somewhere outside him. He stopped laughing and looked around. The sun was up and there was a mist. The grass was weighted down with it and he bent his mouth to the drops and drank. He tried to stand again and this time he did.
He set off again, striking out randomly in the fog. After a short while the sun became hotter and the mist burned away and he could see the policeman behind him. He was further away than he had been yesterday but otherwise his pursuit was unchanged. A solitary figure plodding through the grass. Listing to one side like a sketch in a cartoon, a creature from which the stuffing was leaking. One man pursuing another man through the brown land. They were not people any more, they were a principle in operation: law and outlaw, hunter and quarry.